Curriculum statement – Design Technology

‘Confident in God’s love for us, we commit ourselves to His service’

Vision:

The Design and Technology department is committed to delivering a curriculum accessible to all and provides the broadest possible range of opportunities for students, allowing students to become self-motivated and confident learners. Who can work independently and as part of a team. We aim to ensure that learners develop technical and practical competencies as well as the wider skills valued by employers. Our main priority is for students to be problem solvers who are not afraid of making mistakes. We hope our students will become responsible citizens who make a positive contribution to society.

The department firmly believes that students learn best by ‘doing’ and by allowing them to experiment and take risks, in a safe and positive learning environment. This is achieved through imaginative teaching that embraces new technologies and resembles modern industrial processes, whilst retaining the best of traditional practices. At the heart of this, is the desire to deliver a curriculum in which students produce high quality outcomes and develop their transferrable skills. Students must learn about the social and ethical responsibilities of designers and engineers and the importance of managing finite resources with care. Examination success has been consistently high for many years, many of our students achieving the higher grades.

Aims:

• To establish a safe learning environment which is conducive to learning, is stimulating, imaginative and relaxed where students feel supported and secure.
• To link many different curriculum areas in order to develop a set of transferable skills they can enjoy in school and use in their future working lives. Link their transferable skills to future career paths and employment possibilities.
• To enable students to combine their designing and making skills with knowledge and understanding, in order to design, make, analyse and evaluate products of high quality.
• To value the work of all students, using assessment as a means to monitor student progress, provide information in relation to attainment on a national scale and to form a basis for individual action plans.
• To build on prior learning from years 7 through to year 11.
• Examination success has been consistently high for many years, many of our students achieving the higher grades.